Josh Marshall

Articles by
Josh

Jeff Sessions running the Justice Department represents a huge step backward for voting rights in the United States. It's a big step backwards on numerous issues. But this is the issue I'm focusing on in this post. In one way it will bring us back to the dark days of the Bush DOJ when political operatives tried to use the country's US Attorneys to drive a voter suppression agenda around the country. That, you'll remember, was the backstory to the US Attorney firing scandal. The fired US Attorneys were ones who wouldn't play ball or resisted playing ball when it came to bringing trumped up 'voter fraud' prosecutions as part of that campaign of voter suppression. I think we can be confident that that will now return with a vengeance.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was on CNN talking about the Trump transition. In the course of that conversation there was this exchange with Wolf Blitzer about General Flynn.

BLITZER: Let's talk about another issue that's come up, his connections with Russia. He made frequent appearances on Russian state media, the propaganda arm of Putin rt. He was photographed as you know sitting next to president Putin at one of their big Galas exactly a year ago. He was paid to make a speech there. Is that a problem, you think?

We've been hunting around to try to find out where everyone stands on the Medicare phase out question, as you know. And we may have found a Republican who's on the fence or wavering about supporting Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers. Most Reps and Senators line up along expected party lines. We're most interested in the ones that don't. We may have found one: Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ).

So much of the response from Dems in post-mortems seems like they are treating a problem that didn’t occur. Democrats won the popular vote (by what looks like it will be millions of votes) and would have won control of the House absent gerrymandering. It was a consequential election not a landslide. These things are different. The consequences haven’t been greater in a long time, but acting like it was 1984 or 1972 is an error all in itself.

Here's a good run-down of all the prestige news organizations - Reuters, Bloomberg, ABC, et al. - that gullibly ran with Trump's phony story about saving a Ford plant in Kentucky from moving to Mexico.

I wanted to take a moment to update you on where we stand on Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers. The short version: where we are is not good. Somewhat paradoxically, Medicare may actually be in far greater danger of being dismantled than Obamacare. More on that in a moment.

In recent days we noted that Paul Ryan and people in the Trump camp had suggested that Congress might use a single piece of legislation or at least simultaneously repeal Obamacare and phase out Medicare. It was suggested that this might happen as soon as January. That still may happen.

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From what we can tell, when it comes to Paul Ryan's Medicare Phaseout plan, the two wobbliest Republican members of Congress are Reps. Charlie Dent (R-PA) and Jaime Herrara Beutler (R-WA). They both oppose 'privatization' but aren't clear on what they mean by it. So they seem to be hedging their bets and hoping the storm passes. Also hedging or refusing to give answers are Reps. Babin (R-TX), Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ), Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA), Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Ryan Zinke (R-MT). (Here's the full list which we are continuing to update.) If anybody can figure out where these members of Congress stand or whether they're willing to take a position, by all means let us know. The lead on Medicare Phaseout in the House says they'll try to do it this summer.

Late Update: We've now received a new letter (see list) from Sen. Joe Donnelly confirming that he opposes the Ryan Medicare Phaseout plan.

Interesting report here from Lauren Fox about a Q&A with Sen. Orrin Hatch about Medicare. Hatch makes pretty clear that he supports the Ryan Medicare Phaseout plan (phasing out Medicare and replacing it with private insurance and vouchers.) But he also makes clear that he's reluctant to do it unless Democrats give Republicans cover. As we predicated, a lot of this will come down to whether Democrats give Republicans cover to phaseout Medicare on a notionally bipartisan basis. He also makes clear that he thinks some form of phaseout will be necessary to afford the rest of Trump's agenda. Read.